Arrays of inertial barriers have long been used to limit the effects of errant vehicles striking an obstacle such as a bridge abutment or other hazard adjacent a roadway. A typical inertial barrier system is comprised of an array of frangible plastic containers that are filled with varying amounts of sand or similar type dispersible granular energy absorbing material in a predetermined fashion so that should an errant vehicle crash into the barrier system, the vehicle will be caused to decelerate gradually hopefully with minimum damage to the vehicle and reduced risk of serious injury to its occupants. Barriers of progressively increased weight are typically employed in the direction toward the obstacle to be protected. Thus an errant vehicle will initially strike the lightest barriers first, which will shatter the barriers and scatter the sand or other granular energy absorbing material inside the barriers, causing the inertia of the errant vehicle to be reduced. As the vehicle continues to slow, it will continue to impact progressively heavier barriers until the vehicle comes to a complete stop, hopefully without serious injury to the occupants and with minimum damage to the errant vehicle and the obstacle being protected.
It is known to utilize different size pedestals or cores inside the barrier units to reduce or increase the interior volume of the barrier units which is available for filling with sand to achieve different barrier weight configurations, and also to maintain the center of gravity of the barrier units at about the same height as the bumper of an errant vehicle, which is typically about two feet above the roadway. This prevents the errant vehicle from ramping or climbing over the barriers or from nosing under the barriers during impact. However, this has the disadvantage that an inventory of the different sizes of pedestals or cores must be maintained in order to construct barrier units of the desired weight configurations.
It is also known to employ a single size core inside a standard size container for obtaining different barrier weight configurations without having to use different sized pedestals or cores. However, this has the disadvantage that because of the shape of the core, the orientation of the core must be reversed for achieving all of the desired barrier weight configurations.